Induction Indication

Yesterday was the day I was to go off birth control in order to begin the next step in my lactation induction protocol.  This morning, I took the herbal supplements (blessed thistle and fenugreek seed) recommended as well as the domperidone that I've been taking for six months.  I forgot to eat oatmeal for breakfast, but I'll do better tomorrow.  Interestingly, the protocol I'm on says that oatmeal has shown to increase breast milk production and it's suggested I eat it for breakfast at least three times a week.  

This morning, I began pumping for the first time.  The tentative plan has always been to pump often and in short bursts at first, to get my nipples used to all this suctioning.  Poor nipples.  So anyway.  I pulled out our pump and had to read the instructions, haha.  Then I did about five minutes of pumping on the left breast - only to discover that after pumping, there was a little pearlescent droplet of milk hanging out.  Um, what?!  That is crazy.  I've only been off the birth control for a day, and that is supposed to suppress breast milk.  The protocol tells us that you shouldn't expect milk for up to a week (or more) after beginning to pump.  So to get a little drop on the first pumping pretty much floored me.  Way to go, Lefty!  

Then it was Righty's turn.  I did the same thing, five minutes of pumping - and found that Righty had several MORE droplets of milk and the milk had actually leaked down and wet the areola where the pump contacted it.  Whoa!  Righty, you're even more awesome.  

All in all, I'm mightily impressed with the girls this morning.  Way to be, breasties!  

I'm really starting to let myself feel optimistic about this.  I think I've been so concerned that the induction would fail and I'd let myself down that I never really allowed myself to hope that it really could and would work for us, as a family.  Even if it doesn't work as well as I want, I will try my best and we'll see where that takes us!  

(Sorry for an entry centered on my breasts, certainly that must be odd...  Oh well.)

If You Give A Pregnant Woman A Steam-Cleaner...

She's going to want her wife to steam-clean all the carpets in the house.  Hey, we should start in the living room!  But before we can steam-clean the carpet, we need to shove all our furniture into our combination kitchen/dining room.

While her wife is steaming, the pregnant woman will reconsider the arrangement of the living room furniture.

Once the carpet is dry, she'll want to try out some new furniture scenarios.  But in order to try new things out, it involves moving the television and entertainment unit to a different wall, requiring that the cable for satellite TV be run through a different exterior wall.  Which will require a masonry drill bit.  Which the steam-cleaning wife and the pregnant woman don't own.  Then the lucky father of the pregnant woman gets to come save the day by assisting the pregnant woman in running the new cable through the wall.  Then, the rotten father of the pregnant woman will suggest that in addition to vacuuming, wiping, and zip-tying all the cords at the back of the unit together, she should also cable-staple said zip-tied cord bundles to the back of the unit in accordance with the brickwork-style compartments in the Ikea unit.  Because everyone hates seeing cables behind entertainment units stuffed with electronics and children's DVDs and toys and books.

If the furniture gets rearranged, then all the previous decorations in the living room will need to be altered.  The new space on the walls will of course need new things to occupy them, including MORE photographs than already adorn our home.

And once all that is accomplished, there are of course more rooms to rearrange, redecorate, and steam-clean.


Naturally, I trust you all understand my tongue-in-cheek humor here!  Truthfully, I've found T's new nesting instincts to be rather charming and adorable - likely because I know they aren't here to stay!  I've enjoyed helping out, and I absolutely don't want her doing anything chemical-ish anyway so I'm the first one to volunteer to handle these things.

As I would hope you could tell, nesting has set in for my wonderfully pregnant wife.  Things I don't think I'd ever expect to come from her mouth have been issuing forth at a somewhat alarming pace.  To mention a few:
"I'm really tired of the hard water stains on our dishes.  I think I'll soak the dishes in vinegar and rub the stains off. "
"I feel like I NEED to clean out the junk drawer.  It's driving me crazy."
"Next time most of the silverware is out of the drawer, we should put the plastic divider into the dishwasher."  (This one I actually agree with, lol.)
"The linen closet really needs to be gone through and reorganized.  I think I'll wash everything in there after work tonight."
"Would you mind dusting and then wiping down the ceiling fan blades and housing this weekend?  I really want to balance it better so it STOPS CLICKING ALL THE TIME."
A couple weekends ago I even caught her dusting the fire extinguisher.  (She doesn't seem to appreciate the humor in this that I do.)

To her immense credit, she's been very productive.  She did clean out the junk drawer, she did clean out and reorganize (and label) the shelves of the linen closet.  She's been going through old documents that we tend to neglect by leaving in giant piles and discover again two years later.  Not to mention that she's already washed and put away the baby clothing she received at her surprise work shower in June.  And we've finally cleaned out the cabinet in the kitchen that was devoted to our foster kids - kid dishes, sippy cups, baby food, formula, bibs, meds, you name it.  Haven't even looked in that cabinet in seven months, but now it's been cleaned out and reorganized as well.

The biggest thing left on our list is to clean out the office and create a guest bedroom in its stead.  This is on my To-Do list for this weekend while T handles a huge Catholic youth convention ... I'd rather be me than her this weekend, and that is saying something because the office is a huge undertaking!  Once we can get the guest room going, we'll be able to finish up Ever's room and then we'll be much closer to ready.

Speaking of ready.  I've spent much of my time lately occupying that place of total delight in the idea of meeting my daughter while simultaneously being in denial that she's really going to be here sometime in the next three to seven weeks.  Same old story, right?

In the next couple weeks we'll be doing a casting of T's belly, too, and I'm pretty stoked about that.  Also, my lactation induction protocol is about to change majorly!  I'm stopping the birth control after tomorrow, and beginning to take breastmilk production enhancing herbs and starting to pump.  We'll see in the next couple weeks if we've got any luck!  Let's see, what else... Oh, we took some cute photos!  And T got a new lens for the camera for her birthday, and we're really excited about that.  Photos from the new lens to come soon, hopefully.  Here are the cute ones we took from last weekend to tide you over:

With our dog, Manni!

Knitting Evie's newest beautiful hat.

Caught her stretching - whoa, lookit that belly!

Stuck Between a Rock and a Pregnant Place

Overall, I feel overwhelmingly lucky at how well this pregnancy has gone.  The only major hiccup was my own clumsy fault. My body has done what it is supposed to do and the normal pregnancy aches and pains have been on the mild side.

That being said, I'm a whiny pansy. I really am. I haven't done well with the limitations my pregnant body has, especially when the end point seems so far away.  The end point, my due date.  It not all that far away any more.  47 days (45 if you go by the ultrasound).  I'm finally feeling like I can do it.  I may have to do things at a slower pace and take more breaks, but I can get through the next 7 weeks, its not that long.  I may have to ask for help more often, but I have great friends and family and they get more annoyed when I don't ask and try to do something stupid myself. I spent so much time worrying about being able to survive this summer that I just realized I made it through the hardest part, the monsoons are here and they are fantastic! I'm going to focus on enjoying these last weeks of my pregnancy, since it is likely to be my only one.

With my 3rd trimester about half way over, our to-do list seems to get bigger and bigger.  I think it just seems to get bigger since the time is smaller.  We have accomplished parts of each project, but not enough to cross anything off.  Like our bag for when I go into labor.  We have a bag picked out and a list of what goes in it, but it isn't packed, and we have to buy a lot of the things we need for it. Then there is the house,  most of the projects can't be finished completely until we can clean out the office and turn it into a guest room. Does anyone want a drafting table?

The other thing that has been on my mind is the state of motherhood.  I feel like we are at this weird place where we are first time parents and not, all at the same time.  The most obvious thing for me is sleep.  Every time A or I make a comment about sleep, it seems like everyone's reaction is "Just wait 'til that baby comes!  Enjoy the sleep you get while you can!"  Well, yeah.  Having a newborn means you don't get sleep.  Fortunately, that's what maternity leave is for.  When we had foster kids we had work the next day.  I think with A&A I took one day off, but that day was spend getting shots so they could be enrolled in day care. Taking 2 kids to the doctor and them both needing shots before you know them 24 hours was one of the most traumatic things I've ever had to do.  By the end I wanted to cry with them. My trauma was only a drop in the bucket to what they had to be going through.

There are some things that I'm really looking forward to having my own children instead of fostering.  She will be able to sleep in our room and in our bed if we want.  Our first placement would have been able to be in our room, but she was too big for the bassinet we had, so she was in the crib in the nursery. The other big thing is FORMULA!  We don't have to get up an mix a bottle every time she wakes up! I'm also hoping our little girl has a stronger immune system!  It seemed like our foster kids were ALWAYS sick, and we were, too.  Hopefully breast feeding and pushing daycare off a bit will help us not catch EVERYTHING! I also think the foster kids were especially vulnerable because of all of the stress of their situation. Poor kids. The biggest different is we won't have to deal with CPS! We don't have to arrange our week around when the kids are on visits or when we have home visits.  We won't have team meetings and court dates. We won't have to get permission to cut her hair! Maybe one day we will have to deal with CPS again and it will mean the adoption laws in AZ have changed and we can both have legal rights to our kids. Then it will be worth it!

One thing I did find comfort in with fostering that I won't have with our own is the lack of permanence.  At the most difficult times when I had given up hope, I found some comfort in the fact that the situation wasn't permanent. At some point that particular problem would be someone else's to deal with. When I couldn't comfort one of the kids when they were upset, it was easier to not feel like a failure.  I wasn't the one they wanted to be comforted by and that was okay and normal. But that won't be true anymore. Fortunately it also taught me that usually that problem would eventually be resolved anyways.  As my mother-in-law quotes, "This too shall pass".

I feel like I'm prepared for parenthood. You can't be prepared for every situation, but know our parenting style and work well as a team. I know there will be times when we feel overwhelmed, but now we will be able to take a break and have a babysitter.  They won't have to have their fingerprint card and be on file with the agency.  We can ask a favor from a friend or our family and get an evening out. 

In the mean time we are focusing on the things foster care couldn't prepare us for; pregnancy, labor, and birth, breastfeeding, vaccinations (since we didn't have a choice before), co-sleeping. Later this week we are going to a La Leche League meeting.  We were warned by our Bradley instructor that there will be a lot of women breastfeeding (scandalous!), most without using a nursing cover (even more scandalous!).  Umm, yeah, its La Leche League, that's the point!  Anyways,  I'll try to write a blog afterwards about the meeting and about their book, "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding".

Well, that was a rather long blog for me, hopefully it wasn't too disjointed!

-T

Roller Derby Taught Me How to Give Birth

Well, it is 5:30am and I'm awake.  Exhausted, but awake.  There is no reason for it, other than my inability to fall back asleep, so I'm trying to keep my mind busy until it is ready to try again. Maybe I'll eat something, too.

After our first few birth classes I told A I when I wrote a review of the book it would be about how everything I learned about giving birth, I learned from roller derby. So here is is.

The two prevailing methods of natural childbirth that were recommended to us were the Bradley Method and Hypnobirthing (I've since learned that there is Hypnobirthing and Hypnobabies and they are more different than their names suggest). From the little research I did, I decided that Bradley seemed like it would be a better fit for me. It approaches birth as an athletic event that you need to train your body for.  It incorporates exercise, relaxation, and nutrition and advocates knowledge and decision making for the parents (rather than just doing whatever interventions the hospital says are necessary, or worse, routine).  So we dropped $275 on 12 weeks of classes.

I finished the book for our Bradley Method Class last week.  Well, most of it.  There were some chapters that got skimmed and others I'm sure I missed.  The assigned reading jumped around a lot, so there was a level of disjointedness to it all.  There were chapters that I could swear I had read before, but it turned out "Husband-Coached Childbirth" is just *that* repetitive.  It really seemed to be writing for the idiot husband of a helpless wife.  I found this really contradictory to its message of the natural power of a woman to give birth. Maybe the only way Dr. Bradley knew how to empower husbands was to make them play the hero.  

A and I met when we were 18 while playing roller derby.  We played for about 5 years.  During that time we were on different teams, the same team, local teams, traveling teams, we coached and captained, everything. A was even a referee for a while. It was our lives.

The early years!

The only thing I can come up with is that those 5 years put us more in tune with each other than your average couple taking these classes. We have already learned how to communicate subtly and know what the other person is about to do.  We have seen each other in pain and we know whether space or contact is what is needed.  We understand the difference between pain because something is wrong and pain because your body is doing work. We know never to say "just one more time"  if there is no guarantee. I know that I don't want to hear that I'm "half way there" during each contraction the same way I hated to hear when a drill was half way done (the second half always seemed so much longer!). We know when the other one needs encouragement and that it isn't by telling everyone in the room "Isn't my wife doing great!?"

Its hard to explain, but all of the activities we had to do to learn how to relax just seemed childish.  Honestly, if during labor she puts pressure on a tense muscle and actually says, "this is what a tense muscle feels like, relax this muscle on your next exhale", I'm pretty sure I would kick her out of the room. She knows this, but it doesn't matter, because she would never do it anyways.  I'm pretty sure it drove our instructor crazy that she wouldn't use the prompts we were supposed to be practicing, but we didn't need to. I knew if she was massaging a muscle that I needed to relax it and she knew that if I was having a hard time doing it I would take a deep breath and then be able to.

Maybe I would have come out of this all less cynical if we hadn't been the only couple in the class.  If there had been other people to answer questions and direct the flow of conversation.  If I could see that people really were learning something.  The most important thing I got from the class was that I was already as prepared as possible to give birth and I didn't need 12 weeks of classes to get there.  So I guess that is something.

All in all, I still agree with the idea of an athletic event that you should prepare your body for. I agree that your partner is the best person to help you and be there if you need guidance. Maybe books written by other people on the Bradley Method aren't quite so awful. But I honestly don't care enough to find out.

The most important lesson I learned from roller derby: Be fearless.  Just do what needs to be done, it will take longer and be much more painful if you are afraid.

Me jamming at 2007 Nationals, maybe I'll have a flat belly again one day!

A jamming at 2006 Nationals (she wasn't normally a jammer, poor A)

Memories

As our nesting frenzy sets in further, one of the things I wanted to do was go through our many-compartmented Ikea entertainment unit and clean it out.  You see, after our foster kids left last December, we couldn't bring ourselves to empty all their toys and books and stuffed animals out.  Quilted cozily in a thick layer of dust, the shelves turned steadily from black to light brown as the months passed us by, all the toys staring out at us night after night as we sat on the couch.  Some days, it is a comfort.  Some days, a burden.

But no longer.  I needed to get it cleaned out, organized, and sorted.  I spent my afternoon pulling dusty toys and books out and sorting them into piles.  Trash.  Washing machine.  Keep, but put away.  Keep, and replace on the shelves of the unit.  Now, it stands clean and black once more, stocked with toys and books, awaiting its next little girl to provide hours of entertainment to.

Toys and books were given to us by family, knowing we needed toys for whatever foster kids would come our way.  I found myself receiving from my mother toys that belonged to myself and my brother.  Toys that belonged to my foster siblings from when I was growing up.  As the children before them had, our foster children loved and played with many of these hand-me-downs.  I held a Christmas teddy bear that belonged to my brother, fingers brushing dust from his velvet vest, and thought about how at one point I had a Christmas teddy bear-ette to be friends with this one.  I picked up the periwinkle stuffed dog I had as a kid, aptly named Perry.  I couldn't help but smile at all these memories I had for these toys, things that would never be billed as "keepsakes" per se, but toys that have lasted the test of time and have been much loved.  And then I think that someday in the near future, our daughter will lay her head down on Perry, or invite Christmas Bear to tea parties.  How incredible is that?  I don't know that most toys are so lucky to be so well-traveled, or be lucky enough to have so many children to care for.

Perhaps I sound like a broken record, but we've been thinking a lot about the last two kids, the ones who left as Ever was conceived.  T looked through our photo album of last year, and for the first time the photos afforded her a sense of comfort instead of sadness.  For this, we're thankful.

T is 31 weeks pregnant today.  31 weeks... only nine more weeks until Evie's due date and only six more weeks until she reaches full term.  We're feeling anxious about getting everything done, but my parents are coming to visit tomorrow and hopefully they will be able to help us get the giant vinyl wall decals put up in Evie's room.  We went on a mega shopping trip this afternoon to buy T more clothes that might actually fit her, as well as for some new shelves and lamps for our bedroom.  Who knew that maternity clothes could be so very infuriating?  Poor T.  It used to be charming and cute when clothes didn't fit, when her belly was small and pregnancy was still new and different.  Trust me, that is no longer the case.

The midwife told T yesterday that the baby was head down, which is fantastic and we're hoping she's brainy enough to be that way when T goes into labor.  We've been trying to figure out where she is, but honestly there are so many bumps and lumps!  They're hard to tell apart.  Little Ever gets hiccups frequently, and sometimes she even passes them on to T!  The Braxton-Hicks contractions continue, and seem to be gaining in numbers.

Soon, little one will make her grand entrance.  I am gradually becoming more impatient to see her sweet face, kiss her cheeks, and look into her eyes.  I am anxious for the day that she comes out of T and stops causing her discomfort.  Though I know she'll experience much more discomfort before baby gets here, I hope for her sake it's tolerable.  I worry about my love, and I hate that I cannot do more for her.

We will be taking photos soon, and I will be certain to share them here as T's belly has become quite impressive!  Have a great weekend, all.

Song of the Cicada

The first hints of this summer's upcoming monsoon season are sneaking their tendrils into our 105 degree days, teasing the college kids with a few hours of higher humidity and cooler temperatures.  The locals know it won't hit full force for a while still, but the first drops of rain our parched desert has drunk in months are quite seductive.  The scent of the moistened creosote is absolutely the smell of the desert - my desert.  The cicadas sing their droning monotony as a few drips of rain patter the warm pavement and the humidity sinks down among us, shrugging itself around our shoulders and stealing away in between flyaway hairs, curling them to our necks and causing perspiration at our temples.  The combination of the water and the hot pavement release rich-smelling minerals out into the air, and every now and again you can catch a cool breeze punctuating the pressing heat of the day.  It's absolutely intoxicating.

Although we've always said we'd like to live somewhere greener, somewhere with real seasons, I know I would miss the desert immeasurably.  I love living here, for all its misgivings.  It's my home, it lives on in my heart and in my dreams and it presses heavily on me tonight, a night following a day of thunder and lightning and slight, sweetly delicious rainfall.

Life as we know it is full of comforting daily expectations, things we've lived with for years.  But life is also full of uncertainty, especially for us or maybe just for me.  This new person about to join us will change so much.  Of course we know that; I know that.  What'll it be like?  Who is she?  Is she going to like me?  Am I going to be good enough for her?  Did we do the right thing?  All questions that most parents have asked themselves while waiting for their children to be born.  Like pregnancy, so many before us have walked this path and yet I find that it doesn't make me feel less ... alone, for lack of a better term.  It feels nearly as if we're the first people ever to travel this journey.  Perhaps that's one of the great miracles of creating life.

Each one of us is so full of magic and hope and promise and miraculousness.  It's incredible that my body functions, my heart beats and my brain fires and my nerves respond and I'm a thinking, breathing, living being.  Yet I don't feel terribly special, on a day to day basis.  My wife is growing my daughter inside her body, and that absolutely amazes me.  She was created from mere cells, and in the last seven months has gone from a tiny cluster of cells to a tiny being, one who already has the beginnings of her personality.  What could be more incredible than a brand new life?

I do feel badly for T.  She is thirty weeks now, and her discomfort seems only to increase by the day.  We've been waiting so long for this, and I only wish it were easier for her.  I wish I could shoulder more of her discomfort, her pain, the little things that annoy her.  I am a fixer, and I can't fix this.  We just have to wait together, fingers entwined, shoulder to shoulder, for Ever.  Forever.  For the present, and for the future, and hope for some wisdom in there somewhere.

I suppose the weather has left me feeling contemplative.  I apologize that this hasn't been a more informative post, though I suspect it is likely indicative of my frame of mind tonight.

I leave you with a picture of T, showing off her new trick as we sit down to have frozen yogurt together.

California weekend

It's been awhile, eh blog?  I've missed you!

Things here have been as crazy as usual - and in some ways, crazier!  The first weekend in June we drove into Thousand Oaks, California for T's grandfather's wedding as well as some (not enough) beach time with the family.

First, we met up with T's cousin Ami and her boyfriend Ben for dinner - I'd never met them before, and they're wonderful!  I just wish we lived closer so we could hang out.

Both Grandpa and his new bride are widows (widowers?), and they are very sweet together.  It was lovely of them to invite us to come for their big day.

Me and T at the reception


Following the reception, we drove down to the beach town we were married in, Laguna Beach.  We took an awesome picture of T with her iPhone, but the iPhone sadly got left at the in-laws house tonight so you all are going to have to wait to see the great Laguna Beach lifeguard tower photo.

We spent a few hours wandering around our favorite haunts, including our very favorite shop, Art for the Soul.  Bought a couple of greeting cards there and were shooed out the door at closing time.  We got some gelato and sat on the boardwalk, freezing our butts off and loving every moment of the chilly salt air that blew through our thin Arizona clothes.  We'd hoped to have dinner in our new favorite cafe, but it was an hour and a half wait to eat so we decided to hightail it outta there and head to our hotel in nearby Dana Point, where T's family all were.

We picked up some dinner from the hotel restaurant and enjoyed an evening together with my brother and sister-in-law and our nephew Erik, my out-laws, and our littlest nephew Jon.

The next morning (after eating breakfast at a doughnut shop, of all places) we headed to the beach in Dana Point.  T and I dug out an area for her to sit in the sand and began building some sand castles.

After spending a few hours together on the beach (T's siblings and their kids were there, too!) it was time to leave.  We headed back home to Tucson.  A few hours into the drive, I noticed my face was starting to feel tight.  I thought to myself, "Yes, I must've gotten a little sunburned.  Oh well."

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Not just a little sunburned.  A LOT sunburned.  I had been wearing my sunglasses most of the time and so I had the supremely cool "raccoon" sunburn going on.  Not to mention where my pants had been rolled up - my shins and the top of my feet fried.  So did T's, as well as my very unfortunate mother-in-law, who received the worst of it by far.  She had sausage legs and feet for several days and is still recovering, over a week later.  My father-in-law had minimal leg burning, T got a bit of a burn on her face as well but it was not as rockin' as mine.  It is a really good thing I don't have a customer service job, haha.  I was frightening there for a few days.

Both on the drive to and fro, I continually was full of gladness.  I'm so fortunate to have someone who never is boring, someone who I never get tired of or need time away from, someone who laughs at my goofy jokes and humors me when I have crazy ideas for intricate photos.  Someone who understands what I need, someone who I can take care of and love on.  Someone who also wants to take care of me and be with me.  I recognize that these are all great qualities in your life partner, but I also see that not everybody has this in their life.  I'm glad for you, T.  And I'm glad for our tiny Ever, who is only going to make us a fuller family.

So for anybody who isn't counting the weeks carefully (or crazily, as I am...) T is 28 weeks along now.  That is very pregnant.  That is nearly seven months pregnant.  Evie is growing faster than ever, with about five or six pounds to gain yet.  That little fact sometimes is concerning, as poor T's belly already seems stretched to its limit.  We of course realize that it is NOT actually stretched to its limit, but it is very tight and Evie is quite insistent about moving around still.  We began to notice and feel her hiccuping in there last weekend, right when T sat down on the beach.  It's very adorable.  T may not think so, I don't know.

The belly button is an ever-evolving source of entertainment, as well.  It's totally flat most of the time, with a small purpley star in its center.  When her abdominal muscles contract, it pooches the belly button out a little bit and forces her belly into a cone shape, and that makes her laugh. We're interested to see if it ever really "pops" out.  There's still lots of time for that.

In our Bradley class (which has finally started becoming useful!) our homework this week was to pack a birthing bag for the birth center!  Insanity!  I mean, okay great, it's awesome and Boy Scoutish to be prepared and all, but eek!  Time to pack the birth bag means the baby will be here soon.  SOON.  Hmm.  Notice, I did not say that we'd actually packed the bag.  Mostly I've just been thinking about how that means the baby is coming soon.  But yes, the Bradley instructor is now going over laboring positions and pushing positions and birth-type scenarios, which is scary and exciting.  I'm glad to be DOING SOMETHING other than talking about nutrition and how much exercise is enough.

Speaking of Bradley homework, I have two chapters in the silly and outdated Husband-Coached Childbirth book to read.  Must go.

I promise, we'll be back soon, because we've got a lot of stuff to talk about and mull over and T will be writing a review on The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding here soon.

We love you all and hope you're doing well!